Shanghai Baby

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English

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Nov 24, 2024

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docx

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[Surname] 1 Student’s Name Instructor’s Name Course Date Shanghai Baby Introduction China in the late 1990's was a difficult place to live in. The country was struggling through the throes of AIDS and SARS, and there was widespread corruption. In Shanghai Baby, author Wei Hui tells the story of how she, a woman born and raised in China, coped with the country's turmoil through her experience of adoption. The novel opens in 2003, when Wei is twenty-five and living in Shanghai, China's most populous city. Wei arrives in America soon after she is adopted by an American family and quickly realizes that the transition from China to America will be difficult for her. She becomes conflicted about adopting a new country's language, culture and ideals while trying to maintain her identity as a Chinese person. Not only does this reality serve as a catalyst for the story, but it also allows the reader to have insight into the struggles that Wei has while trying to find her place in America. Wei arrives in America soon after she is adopted by an American family and quickly realizes that the transition from China to America will be difficult for her. She becomes conflicted about adopting a new country's language, culture and ideals while trying to maintain her identity as a Chinese person. Not only does this reality serve as a catalyst for the story, but it also allows the reader to have insight into a cultural conflict that is not often explored in literature. The novel revolves around a story of a young woman who was born in China, brought up in Britain and now lives in Shanghai.

[Surname] 2 Book I: Morningside The novel starts at dawn as the protagonist, Pearl, walks to work, but is late and almost gets fired. Similarly, she then goes to Wang's Books and buys a copy of "Anna Karenina." "A riveting novel about a young woman coming of age in the seductive, dangerous world of 1980s Shanghai." As Jialing negotiates her life, she keeps tabs on her grandmother and her father's mistress, who live nearby. Meanwhile, she struggles with her relationships with her husband and her mother. Book II: Shanghai Baby On the other hand, the book follows the protagonist as she tries to reconcile her relationships with her parents, her friends and her lover. It also shows how she has to deal with the spiritual and emotional emptiness of living in Shanghai. The book is set in Shanghai, China and in the United States. The protagonist is Jialing, a young and beautiful Chinese woman, who was raised in the United States. In the opening sequence of the novel, she is pregnant and returning to Shanghai to give birth. Synopsis of Shanghai Baby Mao's daughter, Liuyang, is born in 1996 in Shanghai. She experiences China's economic evolution and all the accompanying changes of society. As one of the first generation of successful, cosmopolitan Chinese, Liuyang has a hard time understanding what it means to be Chinese. She is a rootless citizen who is paranoid about the future of China. Liuyang's father dies when she is young, and her mother marries an American who has a child from a previous marriage. In America, Liuyang attends an Ivy League university, but she cannot escape the sense that she doesn't belong to either her mother's family or her father's. The death of her father leaves Liuyang with a life-long sense of loss and regret. Liuyang is a cosmopolitan, modern woman who cannot reconcile the contradictions in China

[Surname] 3 and feels no part of it. She is a rootless citizen, who has experienced all the changes that China has undergone since 1949, but not in a way that would give meaning to them. The novel revolves around Liuyang an educated, cosmopolitan woman who has spent her life in China's cities. She suffers from a chronic condition that made her cut off from the country, and is unwilling to take any steps to transform it as she continues to imagine herself as an outsider. Her sense of regret and loss due to the death of her father leads her on a journey of returning home. Plot Summary The book is the first to be published by a high-profile Chinese author since the 1989 pro-democracy protests and subsequent June 4 military crackdown on Tiananmen Square. It tells the story of Shanghainese woman, Chen Zhen, who is born in the late 1960s. The novel tracks Chen's life in Shanghai and her pursuit of an education after she is abandoned by her mother. The book moves into the 1990s, when Chen finds work as a journalist. She soon discovers that every aspect of her life is compromised by corruption. Chen's relationships with men are also unstable and she suffers abuse. Chen Zhen is born in 1969 and abandoned by her mother who was too busy to care for her. She is taken in by a family friend and grows up with the knowledge that she will never be able to find out what happened to her mother or even if she is still alive. She eventually finds work as a journalist and slowly begins surveilling corruption, including the corruption of herself. Lastly, Chen falls into an affair with a man who can manipulate his wife's influence and power to his advantage, which leads to her eventual death. Conclusion Shanghai Baby is an intriguing depiction of a woman struggling to find herself in China. The moral lessons learned from the novel is to always think before you make a

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